The plan was hatched over a double Jim Bean, straight with a water back.Trapped at Denver International Airport for a three-hour, 20-minute layover, I watched as people gathered – directly opposite the gate for my flight to Sacramento – for a British Airways flight to London.I'd become a stowaway.I’d just join the ebb and flow of the line, hang near the back lavatory until nearly everyone had boarded – and found myself an empty seat for a Trans-Atlantic adventure to the British Isles.I admit, there were flaws in my plan.I didn’t have a boarding pass.Or my passport.But it would have made for some interesting storytelling, in the end.It’s not like I want to run away from anyone.Or anything.It’s just being trapped in the petri dish (anything you touch is bound to have some exotic organism stuck too it – wash your mitts at the airport – often) that is a major airport...for hours...sucks.I managed, in my time in Denver, to break two of my 43 Things (I chewed my fingernails bloody and scarfed down a Big Mac and large fries; I’m so ashamed).That’s why I meandered into the Cowboy Bar in the first place, to give my mind something to do (and drinking, I admit, probably wasn’t the greatest course of action; for the drinks I purchased, I could have waited until I was on the ground in Cali and bought myself a whole bottle of whiskey) and to hatch my plan for becoming a stowaway.But you can’t stay in an airport bar forever (you’ll go broke or you'll go nuts).So I amused myself with people-watching and eavesdropping on conversations.I watched from the British Airways side of the gates (just, you know, in case I saw an opportunity) as people meandered through the A gates in Denver.Mostly, I cast casual glances at the backsides of women.I am a butt man. I am not ashamed of it.There are men (my father being one of them) who will oogle women with large breasts. The larger, the better. And I mean give a hard stare at chest-level.Not me.I do not oogle.I observe.Buttocks.Even the most casual observation can get interesting.I took a cell call, and as I looked up again, there was a woman standing with her back toward me, taking on her cell. A fabulous butt in blue jeans.And she turned.Exposing her very pregnant stomach.At first, I was horrified.Then I thought, “Hey, that’s a beautiful thing.”OK, so maybe I am a perv.I then switched to listening in on others’ conversations. One-sided cell conversations and two-sided ones between people trapped at the airport like me.(Tangent story time; I’ve listened to conversations for forever. Once, in college, I was at a “gentlemen’s club” when a very outspoken state legislator – and avowed ‘Christian Conservative’ - came in with his chief of staff and some other guy. They sat down at the table next to us and started to spew dirt on his fellow legislators, and I spent the next 30 minutes taking notes on bar napkins – then I called my journalism professor from the pay telephone in the men’s room in a beer-enhanced giddiness to report the legislator saying very baaaad things.“And what do you think you’re going to do with these notes?” he asked. “You, my son, are at a titty bar yourself. That kind of shoots down your objectivity and a sense of fairness, don’t you think?” Well, he had me there).I know writers who eavesdrop on conversations all the time. They walk around with little notebooks and write stuff down. Then, they go home, write quotes down on index cards and file them. It is seriously easier to take quotes from real life – rather than make them up when writing a piece of fiction.I didn’t hear anything good.I should have made a run for that British Airways flight.

Ok, if you manage to hatch a plan to become a stowaway to England, let me know. Assuming you survive the twelve hour flight without freezing to death in the wheel wells, I'll alert you as to when you're over my town, you can just let go and float down! ;-)

Thom Gabrukiewicz is both a communicator and a writer of flash fiction. Most of what he writes is kind of dark, with occasional forays into the light.
He’s a winner of some awards and has covered two Winter Olympics. He’s also written a guidebook about hiking with dogs.
He’s fiercely loyal and has a malevolent side that seems to visit less and less. He’s both a hopeless romantic and a realist.
He's currently working on community wellness issues in Wyoming.